 |
|
Pan Macmillan Australia, This edition first published
Dec 2006
Reviewed by Sunnie Gill
A fire in an old warehouse in London isn’t such an unusual occurrence.
What is different about this fire is that when mopping up afterwards,
fire-fighters discover a badly burnt female body. Their first thought is
that it is a homeless person, seeking shelter, but there are no clothes on
this body and no sign of any belongings. This is when Detective
Superintendent Duncan Kincaid is called in.
Kincaid is under pressure. He is facing a bitter custody battle over his
son with the parents of his late ex-wife and he is still coming to terms
with the miscarriage his partner D.I. Gemma Jones had not so long ago.
Winnie is a church minister and an old friend of Gemma’s. She is filling
in for an ill colleague in an inner London parish. One of her
parishioners, the wheel-chair bound Frannie Liu, telephones Winnie and
tells her that her carer, Elaine, hasn’t come home. Elaine is a creature
of habit and has never done this before and Frannie is afraid something
has happened. Could the body in the warehouse be Elaine’s? If it is, what
on earth was she doing there?
Meanwhile in another part of the city ten-year-old Harriet is being held
in an old dark house by a woman she doesn’t know. Her parents are divorced
and there’s a lot of bitterness between them and she is wondering why she
is there and why they haven’t come to get her.
If there’s one thing British crime writers do well it’s the police
procedural and IN A DARK HOUSE is British police procedural at its best.
There are a host of clues and a number of events. The fun is in trying to
work out which is part of the investigation and which is coincidental. How
many of the threads are connected? Is there just one crime and everything
is connected? Or are there two, three or perhaps more? It’s like a jigsaw
with extra pieces from another puzzle. You have to figure out what belongs
and then put them in the right order to solve the mystery. I managed to
get three quarters of the way there. And you have to pay attention.
Towards the end of the book I read a seemingly innocuous sentence. About
three pages later I had an AHA! moment when suddenly that one sentence
made things clear.
One thing that isn’t always easy to get right in crime fiction is creating
the right balance between the mystery and learning about the characters
and their private lives. Learn too little about the protagonists and you
don’t really care about them. Too much time devoted to their lives and it
slows down the plot. Deborah Crombie has managed that balance very well.
The only minor quibble I had with the book was that the solution felt just
a tiny bit anti-climactic. Then again, I suppose real life investigations
are often like that.
With the holiday season fast approaching, IN A DARK HOUSE is just the
thing for an absorbing and entertaining read.
December 2006 review originally published on Murder & Mayhem
[Note: Since writing this review I discovered that
the author of IN A DARK HOUSE is in fact from the USA. This makes her
flawless portrayal of British detectives even more impressive.]
All cover art used at Reviewer's Choice Reviews is copyrighted by the
respective publisher. All reviews and articles found at Reviewer's Choice
Reviews are the sole property of the contributor and are copyrighted by
the same.
|
